VELUX France

VELUX France is a subsidiary of the Danish VELUX A/S group. VELUX France sells roof windows, seals, interior fittings, interior blinds, exterior shutters and blinds, electrical control units and solar panels. VELUX France does not sell its products directly to the consumer but to wholesalers and specialist superstores. VELUX France employs approximately 250 people.

Mobility Solution Challenges for After-Sales Service Engineers: Optimisation of Job Appointments

The after-sales service engineers are equipped with general-purpose Qtek PDAs and lightweight printers. With the PDAs, the engineers can access SAP professional applications which contain their job plans. Job reports are drawn up on the PDA and synchronised with the company’s job coordination system.

At the time the project was launched, VELUX France was encountering synchronisation problems. Improved "time out" by EveryWAN resolved some of the problems, but not all. It was necessary to offer engineers remote support comparable to that offered to the sales force via their portable PCs.

Benefits of the EveryWAN Solution: Improved Pool Management and Over-the-Air Distribution Functions

To meet its synchronisation and remote assistance objectives, VELUX France chose EveryWAN and rolled it out at the end of 2005. Sparus contributed to the success of the project which has given a quicker than expected return on investment: 18 months instead of 24 months. VELUX France is delighted that it now has 93% of response lines confirmed via PDA, that response time has been reduced from 5.5 days to 0.5 days and that turnover per engineer has increased. After more than a year and a half in use, VELUX France is able to assess the effects of using EveryWAN:

- A synchronised data compression rate of approximately 70%, which reduces communication costs.

- Use of the EveryWAN over-the-air distribution function enables software updates while PDA resetting is via a clone stored on an SD card.

- Being able to access the PDA directly and at the same time speak with the engineer greatly facilitates diagnosis and resolution of problems. Each remote assistance (one call out of two) represents time saved for both hotline and engineer, and avoids the need to return equipment to the workshop.

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